281–290 of 701 posts
This piece seems logical and correct. It also seems entirely AI-generated, but I suppose we've moved into a world where that's just the way content is now.
Nah that's just the way defense essays have sounded for the past 20 years or so
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One of the most interesting innovations in the Ukraine war is their internal market place for drones, letting each drone group decide which drones they want to procure and use in battle. It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics.
You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card. Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex. That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either.
Even then, a custom supply chain can be set up domestically. You'll probably have to limit the number of variations for these servos and motors, but you can produce them even manually if you absolutely have to.
I wonder when the use of 'culminate', v. "reach a climax or point of highest development" for "cease to be effective" became the standard in military-related writing when trying to sound smart. The original usage in the specific context of an army's advance or offensive coming to an end made some sense but it's now used as basically a wordy synonym for "stops" in any context.
I'm also loving their phrase "on a nonlinear battlefield" ... not sure what a linear battlefield would be
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The main point of this paper is that rear area bases are too vulnerable now. This paper is from West Point, and is the view from the Army side. It's a big problem for air forces, too. The US has a tradition of large, supposedly secure bases in the rear. The USAF has relied on this since WWII. It's not working any more. Iran has been hitting US air bases. In the last day, they've hit US bases in Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait…
> The US has a tradition of large, supposedly secure bases in the rear. The USAF has relied on this since WWII. It's not working any more. I guess we're all guerrilla fighters now.
Guerrilla forces have to be popular, or at minimum, have the local population cowed. They're useful for kicking an oppressor out of your own country, but not for conquest.
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You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card. Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex. That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either.
I am so curious about this. There are a lot of 3D printed drone startups now. But nobody really seems to be thinking about the electronics sourcing. Great you can print a drone shell wherever but what happens if China turns off exports?
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It absolutely does, it can simply choose to not bomb Iran after Iran enforces regulations on its (shared with Oman) waterway. Bombing Iran for a month because Iran fired on 4 ships that were violating its SoH rules is wildly disproportionate and optional.
This is not necessarily true. Yes the strait of hormuz is technically in their territorial waters, but it has been recognized as an international water way until recently. Every country with a port on the other side of the strait is going to lose access. This might not be a tolerable situation to those allies of ours and they also have the ability to force the war to drag on. Maybe we walk and pull out from our bases…
This kind of shit or excuses could not be pulled if we would be talking about gulf of mexico for example.
US is not center of the world and rest of the world means >95% of mankind, rest of the world is pretty fed up with that unfair treatment and things are changing. Very slowly, but steadily.
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Ukraine and Taiwan quietly cooperate in weapons development and production, especially drones.[1] They both have big, aggressive neighbors. Ukraine knows how to fight them, and Taiwan can make electronics in quantity. Ukraine is starting to get cooperation from Japan, too, but that's in an earlier stage.[2] With Taiwan, it's serious. The paper doesn't mention Ukraine at all, yet it's all about the kind of war that Uk…
And if we're talking Ukraine, we have to talk Poland as it has been facilitating 90% of all Western military equipment, humanitarian aid, and crucial trade deliveries into the country. Poland is, of course, geopolitically positioned in a way that requires at least regional power status to survive if not thrive. A power vacuum in Poland is bad news for the security of Europe and Poland's immediate neighbors and region…
Taiwan and Japan, though, aren't in Russia's line of fire. The cooperation with Ukraine is because Ukraine figured out how to stop Russia. Taiwan has a real threat, and if they can build defenses that mean China faces a years-long war, there probably won't be one.
As for the article, when the institution that trains future generals says we have a problem then we should _listen_.
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Napoleon planned his Russian campaign extensively: he had supply hubs set up all over the Duchy of Warsaw, with feeder routers from Prussia keeping them full. What he didn't anticipate was how bad the roads in Russia would be and how long the Russian army would retreat along them. You can't resupply an army that is marching on a narrow dirt road through a forest because it's blocking its own supply lines.
If you’re going to Russia for the winter, have somewhere to stay and take a jacket. Napoleon screwed up the logistics with all his assumptions.